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General Accounting Office Appoints New Members to National Healthcare Workforce Commission–Hope Some Have Some First Hand Experience with Health IT And Know Algorithms

I know I beat this to death, but it’s important as without this, we end up with speakers who put their best foot forward, but have no clue on what needs to happen behind the scenes to make things work.

With candidates today, boy do we see this all over the news too with lack of general consumer digital IT literacy and it will continue to bite as there are those who have this knowledge and more. Policymakers, you need to know how the algorithmic processes take place and the people that do this for you before anyone gets any action today. This is a pretty important workforce and we certainly don’t want to be let down again due to this lack of healthcare literacy that just stalls the heck out of anything happening and creates additional costly studies when first hand consumer participation can cut to the chase in lot of areas.

This group is also supposed to work with and help Congress, that is if some of them would improve their general Healthcare digital literacy too. We saw a good example of what the literacy is with the GOP last week with pdf documents and not something that makes me feel warm and fuzzy at all when we can see through a simple “right click” on a document who the author are of this pledge to America that was written by lobbyists who are now staff members.

Just for the record, consumer general digital health literacy is a non partisan issue with ‘non participation” from all parties. BD

WASHINGTON, DC (September 30, 2010) – Gene L. Dodaro, Acting Comptroller General of the United States and head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), today announced the appointment of 15 members to the new National Health Care Workforce Commission.

“Today’s appointees bring impressive expertise and professional credentials to their role of advising policymakers on ways to improve the health care workforce which is so essential to ensuring the health and safety of the American people,” Dodaro said.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act created the Commission to serve as a national resource for Congress, the President, and states and localities; to communicate and coordinate with federal departments; to develop and commission evaluations of education and training activities; to identify barriers to improved coordination at the federal, state, and local levels and recommend ways to address them; and to encourage innovations that address population needs, changing technology, and other environmental factors.

The Act requires the Comptroller General to appoint the Commission members and the members are required to be appointed for three-year terms, but staggered terms are mandated for the first 15 members appointed in September 2010. Those first set of appointments are set at one, two, or three years.

Dark Arts of Mathemical Deception

Professor Charlie Siefe of NYU, a mathematician debunks clinical trials, and few other items to where data is spun and fools you, every day example, hear about the perfect butt algorithm and more. These are probably some things you have never thought about but again after listening to what he has to say, it’s time to think about being skeptical. Here’s a radio show that also talks about the same topics.

This video digs in a bit further with how fictitious business models are used by banks and companies do this too. The models are so complex that CEOs don’t even understand them. “Quants, The Alchemists of Wall Street will take you through how “math models” work at banks and financial institutions in a way that even the layman can understand. More videos like over at theAlgo Duping/Killer Algorithm Page. Bank of America will also tell you“IT’ is a business” how they make money.

Weapons of Math Destruction

This is a lecture where Kathy O’Neill, a former Quant who worked for a Hedge Fund (Weapons of Math Destruction) on Wall Street will tell you what is done with your retirement money and more. The banks and companies use technology to take advantage because they can. “Of course we are going to take advantage because our tools are our brains…if they could figure out a way to take advantage of pension funds they would, a good interview with explaining smart money and dumb money.

Algorithms Shape The World

This is a very good presentation done a TED Conference and really was the one that got everyone started thinking about algorithms and today it’s talked about a lot. As he says “if you’re an algorithm, life is looking pretty good, but can’t say the same for humans”. What is a black box? Nobody has any control over the flash crash. We have moved forward a bit but still we are writing the unreadable and lost the sense of some of what is happening. Nice plug for Nanex here with research.